Early in my conversation with Joel Schwartz, he said the line we ended up opening the whole episode with: “Because ADHD is me. There’s no separating it.”
Joel is a licensed clinical psychologist and an ADHDer, his word. This episode is about ADHD shame: where it comes from, what it costs to keep hiding, and what changes when you stop apologizing for how your brain works.
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Why this conversation matters to me
I was diagnosed with ADHD in my thirties. I’ve said for a long time that ADHD is a disability, and I’m actively anti-toxic positivity on this platform. So when Joel offered a way to see ADHD as neither a gift nor a defect, it landed right where I already stand.
This was also two ADHDers in one conversation, and it showed. At one point Joel took us down a side road and back again, and all I could say was, “That’s ADHD right there for us though, right? Live and in person.”
Later, he described starting a TV show in bed and not getting up until he finished season five. I said, “That’s the story of my life. Once it starts, it doesn’t stop.”
Meet Joel Schwartz
Joel Schwartz is a licensed clinical psychologist, licensed in California and Colorado, with a doctorate in clinical psychology from the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology at Yeshiva University. He runs NeuroPathways, a neurodiversity affirming therapy and assessment practice on California’s Central Coast, and he has done more than 250 psychological evaluations.
He calls himself an ADHDer, and it’s a deliberate choice. In disability studies, he explained, there has been a move away from person-first language toward identity-first language, and he wanted a version of that for ADHD.
But I’ve landed on saying I’m an ADHDer.
Joel Schwartz
Joel’s practice is NeuroPathways. If you’re looking for neurodiversity affirming therapy or an ADHD assessment, that’s where to start.
Find Joel at:
- NeuroPathways: neuro-pathways.org
- LinkedIn: Joel Schwartz
Where ADHD shame comes from
Joel was formally diagnosed with ADHD around age five or six. By his own account, he got through college on book smarts and brute force. Then grad school hit, and the workload overwhelmed the ways he had been coping.
He almost failed out. What sparked his whole career was how he was treated while he tried to get through it.
You left this thing here. We’re going to punish you by making you write a 10-page paper as if the knowledge was the problem, right?
Joel Schwartz
He also remembered the messages a lot of us grew up hearing: you’re moving too much, don’t fidget, sit still. When messages like that repeat for years, they can stop sounding like someone else’s voice and start sounding like your own.
Research suggests that weight is common. A 2019 study of 104 adults with ADHD in the journal ADHD Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorders found that 23.3% reported high internalized stigma and 88.5% expected to face discrimination in daily life. The authors concluded that internalized stigma and anticipated discrimination are “highly prevalent in adult ADHD.”
If you want more on this, I wrote about why ADHD shame feels so heavy and what helps me.
The cost of hiding ADHD
I asked Joel about a belief that keeps a lot of people from ever asking about ADHD: that if you have a career and a family, you must be fine. His answer went straight to what hiding costs.
He described living in chronic fear that people will find out how much you’re struggling, and that if anything slips, everybody will hate you.
And we really develop this identity around people pleasing and around performing, in order to get the good accolades that we really need to feel good about ourselves.
Joel Schwartz
When anything threatens that, he said, it can be devastating. In his words, “It’s just so costly.” He said it takes creativity, joy and relationships with it.
I also asked what ADHD can look like in men specifically. Joel said he often sees men cope through substance use, or through anger that seems to come out of nowhere. On the brighter side, he sees it in intense hobbies, too.
What neurodiversity affirming therapy and assessment look like
Joel’s version of therapy starts with the room: the lights, the temperature, how you’d like to sit and how you’d like to move.
You really don’t want to talk about that, do you? Like you want to just info dump to me about the concert that you went to.
Joel Schwartz
Sometimes that means taking a walk, putting music on or watching a favorite scene together. He works with what comes naturally to neurodivergent people, instead of forcing them to mask.
An adult ADHD evaluation usually follows a similar path wherever you go, Joel said: a clinical interview that can run one to two hours, a detailed history, questionnaires and some cognitive testing. It can be really taxing. What changes the experience is how much room the assessor gives you.
How much do you feel you have to perform for them?
Joel Schwartz
If you have a choice of assessor, he suggests interviewing them first. Ask whether they’ve heard of neurodiversity, what they understand about ADHD beyond the diagnostic manual, and whether they have experience with ADHD, in their lives or their own. He also keeps boxes of sensory things and stim toys in his office, and he believes you can get an accurate diagnosis with those accommodations in place.
This matters most for people who were missed for years. A 2020 review led by Maja Dobrosavljevic, published in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, pooled studies of adults 50 and older. About 2.18% met research criteria for ADHD on validated rating scales, but only 0.23% had a clinical diagnosis.
The authors note that the research-based figure may overestimate, since several of the studies used screeners. Even so, the gap is wide.
Letting go of ADHD shame without calling it a gift
I told Joel my audience has been burned by toxic positivity plenty, and I asked how he holds the hard days and the real limits without letting shame back in or calling everything a gift.
His answer is what he calls a neutral disability lens. ADHD comes with certain strengths, in his words, “but also comes with things that suck.” And if someone can’t use their legs, nobody thinks twice about offering a wheelchair and a ramp.
There’s no shame in that. There’s no judgment in that. It’s just a fact of what this person can and cannot do.
Joel Schwartz
Then I asked for the smallest true thing somebody could do this week. Joel’s answer was the one inch: stop picturing every step and do just the first one, even if it’s only getting out of bed.
When he’s stuck, he’ll put on music and move a little, which he says helps distract him from the wall of awful. That’s Brendan Mahan’s name for it, and he and I dug into it on his episode about task paralysis.
Key takeaways
- ADHD shame often starts outside you. Messages like “sit still” and “don’t fidget” can turn into the voice in your own head.
- Hiding has a cost. Joel sees it take creativity, joy and relationships.
- An evaluation should let you be you. If you have a choice, ask an assessor how they see ADHD before you book.
- A neutral lens leaves room for both. ADHD can come with strengths and with hard days, and an accommodation is just an accommodation.
People also ask
What is ADHD shame?
ADHD shame is the sense that the way your brain works makes you less than other people, often built from years of criticism about focus, organization or sitting still. In one 2019 study of 104 adults with ADHD, 23.3% reported high internalized stigma. It can show up as hiding, people pleasing or harsh self-talk.
What is neurodiversity affirming therapy?
Neurodiversity affirming therapy treats differences in how a brain works as part of who someone is, not something to fix or hide. For Joel Schwartz, that means adjusting the room for sensory comfort, letting clients move or talk about what’s on their mind, and not forcing them to mask. Approaches vary, so it’s worth asking a therapist how they work.
What should I expect at an adult ADHD evaluation?
Joel Schwartz describes a clinical interview of about one to two hours, a detailed history, questionnaires and some cognitive tests. It can be tiring. A good assessor leaves room for you to be yourself, and if you have a choice, you can ask about their experience with ADHD first.
How does ADHD show up in men?
It varies from person to person. Joel Schwartz says he often sees men cope through substance use or through anger that seems to come out of nowhere, and also through intense hobbies. If that sounds familiar, a clinician who understands adult ADHD is a good place to start.
Final thoughts
I asked Joel for the one thing he wants you to take away from our conversation.
You can’t not be you, so stop trying. And if people don’t like it, then they’re not for you.
Joel Schwartz
If you’re looking for neurodiversity affirming therapy or assessment, visit Joel’s practice at neuro-pathways.org or connect with him on LinkedIn.
If this episode hit home, my guidebook Navigating ADHD & Adulthood is the one I’d point you to next. It’s $20, and that link takes 25% off with code VIBE25.
If you’re new around here, start here to find more conversations like this one.
If this conversation brought something up for you, my Mental Health Resources Hub is free, with no email required.
Follow The Vibe With Ky Podcast on Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode, and leave a rating while you’re there so more people can find the show. You can also follow @TheVibeWithKy on your favorite platform.
Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and nothing in this post is medical advice.
Much love. Good vibes. ‐ Ky
Full transcript
Here’s the full conversation with Joel, in case you’d rather read it.
Read the full transcript
Joel Schwartz (00:00)
Because ADHD is me. There’s no separating it. It’s not like this thing that I have that I could just drop.
It affects the way that we feel, the way that we connect, the way that we sense the world, the way we make meaning, the way we relate to others and and things around us. There’s very little about ADHD that we can just get rid of.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (00:19)
Welcome to The Vibe With Ky Podcast, the show where we talk openly and honestly about mental health and the beautiful mess of being an adult in today’s world. My name is Kyrus Keenan Westcott. Thank you so much for being here.
Today we’re talking about ADHD as a part of who you are and what changes when you stop treating it like something to be ashamed of. Because if it’s not going anywhere, and for a lot of us it isn’t, then the real question was never how to get rid of it. It’s how to live with it, honestly.
Without carrying the shame on top. My guest today is Joel Schwartz. Joel is a licensed clinical psychologist and an ADHDer, his word.
He almost failed out of grad school, and the way that he was treated back then is a big part of why he does the work that he does now. Today, his practice, NeuroPathways, is built around neurodiversity affirming care, therapy, and assessments that start from the idea that your brain works differently, not wrongly. In this conversation, Joel gives us a way to look at ADHD that isn’t a gift and isn’t a defect.
It’s part of how you’re built. And it’s something that you’ve never owed anyone an apology for. Before we get started, if you want more mental health conversations and resources like this, make sure you visit my website at thevibewithky.com or visit me online @TheVibeWithKy on all of your favorite social media platforms.
With that said, my friends, sit back, relax, and enjoy my chat with Joel Schwartz on The Vibe With Ky Podcast.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (01:46)
What’s up, man? How are you?
Joel Schwartz (01:48)
Hi, so excited to be here and meet you and just
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (01:51)
Yeah, yeah.
Joel Schwartz (01:52)
it embrace the energy, the vibe, shall we say.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (01:55)
How’s the central coast treating you?
Joel Schwartz (01:58)
My gosh. I live in a little slice of heaven. My so my interesting enough, you’re you’re talking on one of your threads, or you talk a lot about being an introvert. I always thought I was an
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (02:10)
Yeah.
Joel Schwartz (02:11)
extrovert until COVID hit, and then I’m like, I just like
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (02:15)
Yeah.
Joel Schwartz (02:16)
really intense things because I’m a sensory seeker. And
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (02:19)
Yeah.
Joel Schwartz (02:20)
it doesn’t have anything to do with the people, but I like a mosh pit or
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (02:23)
Yeah.
Joel Schwartz (02:24)
a heavy metal concert, a karaoke, but like coming to a place where there’s a lot of culture and music and hiking and ocean and mountains and and so much to do, but not necessarily a lot of people. It was like, my nervous system didn’t even realize this is what I need. So I’m never leaving.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (02:42)
That must be so nice. Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s amaz.
So you d Joel, what you describe your work as as therapy and testing for the misunderstood. And and you call yourself an ADHDer, right? Not somebody who has ADHD.
You say you are an ADHDer as an identity. And you you
Joel Schwartz (03:02)
Yes.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (03:03)
you trained the completely conventional way, right? UCLA, then and a doctorate, and and somewhere in there you you started pushing back on your own profession, your own profession’s whole way of seeing people like us, like you, like me. Take me back to that.
What what did you see that made you decide the field was just getting it?
Joel Schwartz (03:24)
Well, I think a lot of this, of course, comes from personal experience. You know, I I was so so to w to rewind a little bit, I was diagnosed formally around five or six years old, but the medication completely zombied me out. And so my parents were like, he’s book smart, he’ll be fine.
Didn’t matter that I was, you know, crying every day from being teasing, from being othered, from just brute forcing my way through life. And and, you know, luckily I I was blessed with some book smarts. So I could even get, you know, to the end of college and just brute force my way through things and, you know, cram at the last minute.
And then I hit grad school and the amount of work just completely overwhelmed my coping ability. And then I had a couple of personal things happen as well. And and I just lost all spoons. I lost all ability to do
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (04:20)
Yeah.
Joel Schwartz (04:21)
things. I almost failed out. And the amount of j just unintentionally ableist and terrible treatment that I got while trying to navigate this was kind of the initial spark.
You know, recognize it feel like your your clinical skills are great, but you just can’t complete the things on time.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (04:38)
Yeah.
Joel Schwartz (04:38)
You left this thing here. We’re going to punish you by making you write a 10-page paper as if the knowledge was the problem, right? So there’s a lot of things like that.
And then, you know, just followed by I did some work in psychoanalytic thought. And there’s this kind of like precursor to attachment named Donald Winnicott, who is working with a lot of like traumatized children from World War II in England. And he had this beautiful way of accepting everything that people would put out from a non-shaming based perspective.
He had this idea that children’s spontaneous gestures, movements were part of their psychological engagement with the world. And even if it’s intense or is difficult, there’s a way to tame that without shame. And I’m just flashing back to all the messages about, you know, you’re moving too much.
Don’t do this. Don’t fidget. Sit still. Do you know all those things?
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (05:32)
Right.
Joel Schwartz (05:33)
And I just fell in love with this. So there’s all these like things germinating, right? And then as I start
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (05:39)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Schwartz (05:40)
my clinical work, just because I’m kind of a geeky, neurodivergent guy and didn’t really understand what that meant, the clients that I seem to be connecting with were also geeky, neurodivergent people.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (05:53)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Schwartz (05:53)
And I you know, I I found all these undiagnosed, autistic and ADHD people in my profession who just and my intuitive way of connecting and working with them wasn’t as I was trained.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (06:08)
Right.
Joel Schwartz (06:09)
And then I discovered the neurodiversity paradigm in some of those initial writers who was were talking about how do we apply this to psychotherapy. And just a light bulb went off in my head. I’m like, this is what I’m gonna do.
And so for the next, you know, six or seven years, I started to codify some of these ideas, started working in community with others. There was this Facebook group, Neurodiversity Affirmative Therapists, for about six years that launched a platform for a lot of people to do this work. And the the stated goal was to bring neurodiversity therapy ideas to the mainstream.
And I feel like a lot of that you know is is i the ball is moving and it’s really amazing to see that happen. And then you asked about the term ADHD.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (06:54)
Yeah yeah. I I wanna I wanna Yeah, yeah, please. Mm-hmm.
Joel Schwartz (07:01)
Yeah. So you know, in in disability studies, there’s a movement toward from person first language, person with the disability, person with autism, towards embracing these as identities because they’re so central to how we experience the world and depathologizing disability as something inherently negative. So it started with calling people with autism an autistic person instead.
And I’m sitting here and I’m thinking, we don’t have a corollary for ADHD. How do we do this? And and so I started calling myself an ADHDer, which we still have the disorder, which I don’t like.
We have that second D, which we can’t get away from. You know, there there are other people who come up with other ideas about what to call this from a less pathologizing perspective. But I’ve landed on saying I’m an ADHDer.
Because ADHD is me. There’s no separating it. It’s not like this thing that I have that I could just drop.
It affects the way that we feel, the way that we connect, the way that we sense the world, the way we make meaning, the way we relate to others and and things around us. There’s very little about ADHD that we can just get rid of. It’s really central
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:10)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Schwartz (08:11)
to how we experience the world. And so if we can embrace that with pride.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:14)
Sure.
Joel Schwartz (08:15)
While recognizing it comes with disabilities, then we can own it as just part of of of who we are, as part of our identity.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (08:23)
Yeah, yeah. I wanna I wanna talk about like your your practice like exists for the for the misunderstood, right? People who ha have been through the diagnostic the diagnostic process that you know themselves, like that you’re you work with a lot of people like that.
For somebody whose only picture of therapy is sitting across from a stranger, quietly writing down everything wrong with them. Paint me the other picture. What actually happens w in a neurod in a neurodiversity affirming session that would never happen in a traditional one?
Joel Schwartz (08:59)
Well, first we focus on the sensory parts of the room. You know, is what are the lights like in here? Is it too cold?
Is it too hot? Are you feeling comfortable? How would you like to move?
How would you like to sit? Even, you know, you know, one thing that often happens is as you know, we ADHDers, you know, we get a bug in our in our skull and we can’t quite let it go. And so I’ll see my clients and they’re trying to have a normal conversation or talk about, you know, what’s you know, what you know, trying to force what they’re supposed to talk about.
And I’ll be like, You really don’t want to talk about that, do you? Like you want to just info dump to me about the concert that you went to. And and until you take get that out of your head, it will be ringing in the back of your head and we’re not gonna get anything done.
So do you want to take a walk and talk about that for a little bit? Do we wanna put on the music and rock out for a few minutes? Do we wanna put on that episode of the show and you can show me your favorite scene and we can talk about it and what it means to you?
So yeah, we’re we’re in integrating just body relationship and thoughts that are natural to neurodivergent people instead of forcing masking instead of trying to make it a conventional looking thing because, you know, the the powers of beast this is what therapy is supposed to look like.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (10:08)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I get I get messages every week from women specifically who finally worked up the nerve to ask a doctor about ADHD.
And they often got told, You have a career, you have kids, you are clearly functioning. You cannot possibly have ADHD. You you have personally, you’ve done over 250 evaluations and you specialize in the complicated ones.
So for the woman who’s listening to this, that you know is in her 40s, 50s, listening right now, who built an entire career out of, I guess, compensating, you know, that that belief that that being successful rules ADHD out. Tell me plainly whether it is true and tell me what it cost her to keep believing that.
Joel Schwartz (10:59)
Two thoughts come up for me. One is I I mentioned the word spoons earlier, which comes from disability studies and neurodivergent
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (11:05)
Yeah, yeah.
Joel Schwartz (11:06)
culture. This idea, it it it’s it’s a silly metaphor, but it’s kind of taken on a little bit of a life of its own. I prefer hit points because I, you know, used to play RPGs as a kid. It’s like a unit of energy.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (11:17)
Yeah.
Joel Schwartz (11:18)
And somebody, we all wake up in the morning with, you know, a hundred spoons, and by the time a neurotypical abled person gets to work, maybe they’ve used three spoons. If you have significant disabilities and you’ve had to reorganize your time and you come with, you know, physical obstacles that are hard for you, by the time you get up to work, you’ve lost 20 spoons.
So you’re starting the day at a deficit compared to everybody else. Now multiply that over a lifetime, and you’re essentially working at a spoon deficit that you’re never gonna get back. And it leads to
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (11:53)
Yes.
Joel Schwartz (11:53)
chronic burnout. It leads to complete alienation with yourself and with others. You know, a lot of your content, Ky, is is things about like, I don’t want to do anything.
I don’t want to go anywhere. I’m really happy right here. And yes, sometimes that’s a valid choice.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (12:07)
Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Schwartz (12:09)
And a lot of times that’s because we just don’t have any spoons to do anything but just exist
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (12:16)
Yes.
Joel Schwartz (12:17)
in the moment. And so we do see this chronic burnout
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (12:20)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Schwartz (12:20)
where people are not making relationships, they’re short with other people, they’re not thriving, they’re just doing the grind day to day, unable to really feel good about their lives, and they’re just kind
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (12:32)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Schwartz (12:33)
of coasting without meaning, without joy, without connection. Because that takes spoons, that takes emotional labor to engage in, even if it’s joyful. Joyful experiences still tax the nervous system.
And if you don’t have any money in your nervous system, there’s nothing left to tax. That I don’t know, I’m it’s a weird metaphor. I lost the the plot.
But it taxes the nervous system doesn’t have any money to give.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (13:00)
Ha ha.
Joel Schwartz (13:01)
It taxes. And so you can’t engage in joy. Yeah. Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (13:02)
Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
No, I get it. No, that’s fine. If yeah, that’s ADHD right there for us though, right? Live and in person.
Joel Schwartz (13:10)
All right. I’m glad you followed this little this little haphazard road that I took us on. And
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (13:15)
Yeah.
Joel Schwartz (13:17)
now we’re back. So th so that’s a big thing. And then of course and then you know the shame component, which you talked about earlier.
All of these different all it’s it’s the death of a thousand wounds. And you live in such chronic fear of they’re gonna discover that I’m so, you know, non functional. I’m gonna let it all go and everybody’s gonna hate me.
And we really develop this identity around people pleasing and around performing, in order to get the good accolades that we really need to feel good about ourselves. And if there’s any threat to that, it’s just devastating. So so there’s a collapse of identity too and a collapse of expansion in life.
It’s just so costly. It takes our creativity, our our joy, our relationships.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (14:04)
Yeah.
Joel Schwartz (14:05)
Such a big cost.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (14:06)
Yeah, yeah. I w I wanna I wanna talk about this study that I came across recently. And it was it’s a study from Dobrosavljevic, and it was published in in 2020.
It’s based out of Sweden. And in this study, they they pooled the the the the research on adults over 50 and and they measured two things specifically. They measured how how many showed ADHD at a research level.
And how many actually had a clinical diagnosis on file? About 2% had it. About a quarter of 1% had ever been diagnosed.
And that gap is is is not a rounding error. That that means that’s decades of people walking past every checkpoint unseen, pretty much. For the person that is a a little bit older, again in their 40s, 50s, 60s, that have finally, let’s just say they booked an assessment, you know, for next week or next month.
And they’re quietly terrified of what that person is, what that therapist or doctor is going to say about them, what should that assessment actually feel like if it’s built to see them for who they are?
Joel Schwartz (15:16)
Yeah. Well, let me say that i I know that a lot of people may not have a large choice of who their assessor can be, especially if you’re going through insurance. And and assessors can be certainly overbooked.
If you are lucky enough to have a choice, you can interview the person beforehand and ask them, you know, questions. Have you heard of neurodiversity? What’s your understanding of ADHD beyond the DSM?
Do you have any ADHD people in your life? Do you have any experience? Are you ADHD yourself?
That’s a great question. Not every assessor might be willing to give that much information, like tell their own clinical diagnosis. But I mean that’s information too.
If they have stigma about their ADHD, then that tells you something about the way they view it. So you can get a feel for how welcoming the person is going to be. You can ask them questions like do you think so so one of the most I Gabor Mate, I love him and I hate him.
With trauma, he’s amazing. With substance abuse, he’s amazing. But he’s really pushing this narrative that ADHD, the attention issues are part are dissociation due to trauma. And while trauma can certainly enhance
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (16:27)
Mm.
Joel Schwartz (16:28)
dissociative tendencies and look like more ADHD, I do see so many people out there who will not diagnose ADHD if there’s trauma or they attribute it to trauma, or if it they attribute it to anxiety, and that they’re looking for anything else but ADHD as if ADHD can’t coexist with anything else. It it can. All these other disorders,
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (16:51)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Schwartz (16:51)
I I I say it’s like the software and the hardware. The ADHD is the hardware and you can download anything onto this hardware. You know, so that could be good things or bad things.
Disorders and joyful experiences. So having some questions up front about how they conceptualize these differentials and if there’s somebody who thinks that and it’s interesting how overt some people will be about their belief that ADHD isn’t real, which is just wild and and I so frustrated. Anyways, so that would be a good place to start.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:25)
Yeah. Yeah. I w I wouldn’t
Joel Schwartz (17:25)
I most assessments are going to pretty much go ahead.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (17:30)
You’re good, you’re good, go ahead.
Joel Schwartz (17:32)
Okay. Most assessments are going to go the same way regardless of who’s doing it. You’re gonna sit down and do a pretty lengthy clinical interview.
It takes maybe one to two hours. They’ll take a detailed history. They might give you like a little mini mental status exam asking you to, you know, identify some things, recite some lists, yeah, just things that are t testing basic cognitive functioning.
Just to make sure that you’re capable of engaging in an evaluation. And then there’ll be questionnaires and further tests and some performance measures, like if you’re doing cognitive testing, you know, you make this block thing, define these words, fill out this form in two minutes. And it it can be really taxing.
And so I I think the the way to so a couple things to.
About how how it might look more welcoming is one how rigid is the person about we just had like this you know I’m doing it again going off into the weeds when I’m when I started doing assessments it was very focused on this is the question I’m asking I’m gonna take you back and now I go out into the weeds with the people.
And it might be a little bit more of a disorganized process, but I usually get the information I need just by letting the person be who they are. And frankly, even though this isn’t a formal diagnostic measure, I find that with other ADHDers specifically, if we get in the weeds together instantaneously, it’s like I already know you’re ADHD. We’re already on the same wavelength.
We’re already going out into this. We’re not bothered by it. We’re interrupting each other.
We’re going into this weird like sideways side quests that eventually get back. And I I already know you’re an ADHD at this point. I just looking for the I I just need the the hard evidence to convince everybody else you’re ADHD.
So yeah, allowing for the natural rhythms. Does it feel like a place where you can stretch out, where you can do they have various stim toys? So in my office I’ve got a couple of boxes of sensory things and stim toys that they can reach into and help them regulate.
And you know, when you’re doing testing, there’s some argument there about, you know, do you want the person regulated? Do you want them at kind of their quote unquote worst to get the like snapshot? I believe you can get an accurate diagnosis even with the accommodations.
Especially if you’re writing in your report, you know, person started getting disorganized and losing attention until they
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (20:02)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Schwartz (20:02)
picked up the thing and started using it. And that’s, you know, diagnostic in and of itself. So really how much do does the assessor allow you to be you?
How much do you feel you have to perform for them? And I get that a lot of us bring in that bias, but you can feel people out, right? You can feel when like, this is somebody who isn’t gonna like me for me, or I can tell they’re silently judging, or they’re you you can tell energetically, what’s going on.
So so I think those are kind of the two, the two big things.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (20:33)
Yeah. The I I wanna I wanna talk about the guys for a second, us guys, because there’s a chunk of my audience that are men and they do not they don’t they don’t write in the way that everybody else does. They sit they sit on this for years.
The same type of shame, and internalized ableism that you were talking about, you know, before, same wiring, but the move is to get quieter about it and grind harder. You know, you are you’re a man, you’re an ADHDer, you are a psychologist, so you have watched this from pretty much every angle that there is.
What does it look like when it shows up in a man specifically and what is actually stopping him from saying any of this out loud?
Joel Schwartz (21:20)
I mean, we will often see a lot of substance abuse to cope. A lot and we’ll also see a lot of, you know, anger and rage because, you know, a a lot of ADHD is we kinda lose it sometimes. And if you’re operating at a spoon deficit and you haven’t been taught how to deal with your emotions, you might see a lot of rage as a result.
And so, you know, you might have families where it’s like my husband or is is so like fun and even-keeled all the time and then he just loses it. And I’m so scared of him and he’s not an abusive person, but he just loses it. And you I can I can’t even tell what it comes from.
It’s just so suddenly there. So yeah I’ll see that a lot. You know a lot of folks who might be it’s not as well I don’t know.
I think these the fads go up and down. You know, cocaine usage and Older folks can sometimes be, you know, self-medicating. You know, the younger folks are, you know, buying off market stimulants as well.
And I’ve been I’ve been hearing whispers that I think cocaine is making a little bit of a comeback in drug circles. So you know, who knows? What else comes to mind?
You know, on a positive side, more intense hobbies. So you know, y there’s a huge overabundance of neurodivergence
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (22:36)
Mm.
Joel Schwartz (22:37)
in geek communities.
But you also might see like the person who maybe has, you know, their fantasy football or they’re, you know, an avid hunter, they or fisher, and they have, you know, thirty-five shiny lures, but they’ve only gone fishing once in the last ten years because it’s the only time that they’ve been able to do it because they’re so racked with everything else, but they still love this hobby and they’re still attracted to it.
So you’ll see like these amazing hobbies and collections without actually executing it a lot. So things like that.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (23:13)
Yeah. Here’s here’s what I where I want to be careful because my audience has been burned by toxic positivity plenty. And I’m like actively anti-toxic positivity on on my platform.
You teach clinicians to write assessment reports that that lead with strengths and still document real needs and real supports and real accommodations. So how do you hold both at the same time? You know, like taking the the disability seriously, you know, the hard days, the real limits, without letting shame back in the door and without tipping into, you know, that everything is a gift type of thing.
Joel Schwartz (23:53)
So so we’re we’re gonna go on a little bit of a road here to to get a little bit in the weeds to get to the answer to this question. The the idea is that evolution happens and does not care about disability. So that’s that’s the the thesis topic here.
Where we know that the genes typically associated for ADHD occurred hundreds of thousands of years ago. It exists in great apes as well. There’s probably different variants in other animals.
You certainly see if if you’re a dog owner like we’ve all had the experience of like, that dog is like calm and loyal and amazing. And this dog is like over there in the weeds barking at every little sound and can’t, you know, pay attention and isn’t learning the tricks and just want and is you know super sensitive. So you have these traits that exist in mammals.
And if these traits have existed for hundreds of thousands of years and in other animals, there must be an evolutionary advantage for why they developed. Now. Evolution doesn’t care about the disability that comes with it.
Human beings at some point did something really dumb and decided to use these backbones vertically. So we all stand up and have bad backs by the time we’re 45. That ain’t how the Lord intended it.
Right. We we stood up. It was more efficient for some things.
It was it it was great for our face-to-face interactions, which help with with socializing and connecting, but we have terrible backs by the time we’re forties. Same thing with our eyes. They developed underwater.
So we all have really bad eyes by the time we’re older. Our skulls change shape faster than our teeth could catch up, so we have these horrible molars that push things in all sorts of directions, and most of us need teeth removed at some point in our life. So evolution does not care what negatives can potentially come with something.
And if we look at ADHD through that lens, it takes away the shame, is just something that developed. It’s something that comes with certain strengths, but also comes with things that suck.
And if we just speak about this neutrally, neither too positive or too negative, but we really we we err on the side of positive because, you know, we’ve all heard that ADHD kids hear ten thousand negative messages by the time they’re I don’t know exactly the stats. But that that little piece of apocrypha that we all have, you know, heard.
I like to err on the side of positivity and understanding because we need it so much. I want somebody to come in and feel affirmed, and have some hope. For the future, given what they are, and saying, you know, even with these disabilities, if we look at it through a disability lens, this is just something your brain has trouble doing.
And it doesn’t mean anything other than that. If you have somebody who cannot use their legs, you say, Here is a wheelchair, here is a ramp, I will help you up the stairs if there’s no ability, we will carry you. There’s no shame in that.
There’s no judgment in that. It’s just a fact of what this person can and cannot do. And ADHD through a disability lens can be looked at the same way.
So so a lot of that report and a lot of the the feedback is really trying to depathologize this and look at it more through a neutral disability lens.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (27:20)
Yeah. I have I have one more question before we get to the fun stuff. I wanna talk about the wall, because
Joel Schwartz (27:24)
Mm-hmm. This isn’t fun.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (27:26)
everybody knows the wall. That’s the the the the file the file you can’t open the the gym bag by the door, the the task, you know, that that weighs nothing and somehow weighs everything. And so like I I wanna skip past the systems and the apps and stuff like that.
I wanna talk about the smallest true thing. What can somebody that’s watching or listening right now do this week, today even, that costs no extra time and needs no nobody’s permission that actually moves them one inch through that wall?
Joel Schwartz (27:59)
Well you j you just use the operative word, the one inch. When we start thinking about all the steps involved, everything it’s going to take, we get stuck. But if you can literally just say get out of bed, that’s all I gotta do is get out of bed.
And maybe I’ll even I got an of a my phone’s in a pretty hard case. I might even just throw my damn phone across the room so that I’m not, you know, stuck with it. Like go fetch Joel.
And just doing the one thing to get yourself out of freeze, out of inertia, can be so good. And if you can’t get it bott you know, in your by moving your body, you can do something in your mind or something even smaller. I’m a huge music guy, so putting on music and just like Bopping a little bit, moving my body, distracting me from the wall of awful, can do so much.
Yeah, yeah. So so anything that you’re passionate about, if it’s like, you know, a TV show or something, you gotta do like a little bit of like, I can do this, but I have to actually get up. Because if I start this TV show while I’m lying in bed, you know, I’m not leaving until I’m done with season five.
But then you can turn it on, put it next to you and y exactly.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:10)
That’s the story of my life. Once once it once it starts once it starts, it doesn’t stop.
Joel Schwartz (29:16)
Yeah, yeah. Like you what I’ll often do is I’m big Star Trek guy, so I’m always watching old Star Trek episodes. So like put it on my phone and like put it on the kitchen counter while I’m, you know, drinking my coffee, getting things ready, going through emails.
And just having my attention split a little bit means I’m not thinking about all the steps that I have to do and how difficult it is and all the And it’s gonna be s a failure and I’m gonna be so tired at the end of the day. And I’m not, I’m exigorated for having, you know, got things done. And so so things like that, little tweaks.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:49)
I wanna play a little game with you. And this is called This or That. And what I’m gonna do is I’m
Joel Schwartz (29:52)
Ooh. Mm-hmm.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (29:54)
gonna give you two choices. You can choose one or the either, or neither, or both. It’s not deep.
You can choose whatever you want. And and and then we just go on from there. You ready? You ready to do this?
Joel Schwartz (30:06)
I I was gonna I I am I was gonna say, I mean, the moment you said this or that, I was like there is no or, it’s always gonna be both. Let’s try.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (30:14)
It’s it’s that’s I whenever whenever I talk to somebody that’s neurodivergent, I always make sure that they know that it’s you know you don’t have to choose just one or you can choose neither and all of that. So so the first one is really, really easy because I already know the answer. I already know the answer to this.
But I I I I want it on record. This or that. Star Wars or Star Trek?
Joel Schwartz (30:37)
I used to be both. I have been severely disappointed by Star Wars in recent years. I think that I I am one of the lone defenders of The Last Jedi.
I thought that it opened up so many avenues of creativity and interesting things that could happen, and had they just been brave enough to continue, we could have had amazing things. But Disney and corporations and toxic fandom and all that. So meanwhile Star Trek continues to innovate, be really interesting, go to places, go boldly where no man is gone, no person is gone before, and they say now, thankfully.
And and I I’m loving it. And the other line I have about Star Trek versus Star Wars, which is a bit unfair, but it’s it it’s good, is Star Wars is red bad, blue, good, pew pew pew. And Star Trek is disability, queer, race, politics, accepting and aware and interesting. So which one do you want?
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (31:37)
I I fullheartedly agree with that assessment. I will say that my favorite Star Wars movie is Rogue One for the reasons
Joel Schwartz (31:46)
So good.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (31:47)
that you mentioned, because it was I thought that was the bravest thing that they that they’ve done, the biggest swing. And it’s it’s my favorite Star Wars movie. And I too am have been disappointed in the Star Wars lore as of late, though.
I was a big fan of of Andor. So I thought that was a big swing as well. But
Joel Schwartz (32:03)
Yeah.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (32:03)
that was based off Rogue one, so I’m just saying, take big swings and it might work out.
Joel Schwartz (32:06)
Absolutely. Hundred percent. All all that is full agreement. Mm-hmm.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (32:11)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.
Number two, here we go. When you’re writing a big report, one long hyper focus session or twenty tiny sprints.
Joel Schwartz (32:20)
What a great question. It tends to be one long focused marathon. However I have a a partner and she is an executive functioning dynamo and is a really good body doubler and also has a pretty busy job and has really helped me be accountable and like I’ll be like, all right, I’m gonna get this part of the report done.
What are you gonna do? And having a partner like that has been really just beautiful and and helpful. And for some reason it doesn’t affect her in a negative way at all.
A lot of partners might be affected negatively, but for her she kind of loves it. And and I’m just so lucky to have somebody like that in my life. And so I’m I’m working on maybe less marathoning and a little not so much sprinting, but you know, a more steady pace. But without that, it’s absolutely the marathon. Till three in
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (33:23)
Yeah.
Joel Schwartz (33:23)
the morning.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (33:24)
I got one more for ya. One more for ya. When you have when you have a day off in the central coast, where would you rather be? The ocean or the mountains?
Joel Schwartz (33:34)
Mm, I’m gonna pick the ocean as much as possible. I love long distance swimming, I love snorkeling, I’m a certified scuba diver. There is the sensory experience of being surrounded by water and moving all of my muscles is it’s as close as I’m ever gonna get to a true like egoless meditative state.
I can think so clearly, I can sort through things. I need to have my whole body moving and and the sensory experience combined with the fact that I have to leave my phone on the shore. Whereas if I’m in the mountains, I can, you know, I usually have my phone on or something like that.
It forces the thought isolation while moving my entire body and it it’s just amazing. Absolutely amazing.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (34:24)
Amazing. I got I got one more question for you. And this is the
Joel Schwartz (34:28)
Mm-hmm.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (34:29)
the the the question that I ask all of my guests before I let them go. And that question is, if there’s one thing that you want the audience to take away from our conversation today, what is that one thing?
Joel Schwartz (34:41)
You can’t not be you, so stop trying. And if people don’t like it, then they’re not for you.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (34:47)
I love that. Amen. I I could not have said that
Joel Schwartz (34:50)
Amen.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (34:50)
better myself. I I I love that. Joel, thank you.
Truly. Thank you. Thank you for for giving us your your your weekend right now and and for and for being an honest being that honest about you know your own stuff and not just the clinical version, but just your life and the things that you’ve gone through. So I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much.
Joel Schwartz (35:09)
It was really enjoyable. I I loved getting to actually talk to you. It was really nice.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (35:14)
Yeah, no, I I really do appreciate it.
Kyrus Keenan Westcott (35:16)
A big thank you to Joel Schwartz for being a guest on The Vibe With Ky Podcast today. If you enjoyed Joel Schwartz today, be sure to check him out. You can find Joel at NeuroPathways at neuro-pathways.org.
That’s neuro-pathways.org and on LinkedIn. You can find all of those links in the show notes of this episode. If you enjoyed today’s episode, make sure you visit my website at thevibewithky.com.
Or follow me @TheVibeWithKy on all of your favorite social media platforms for even more conversations and content just like this episode. And if you haven’t already, make sure you subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a rating and a review, especially on Apple Podcasts, so more people can find this podcast. Thank you so much for watching and for listening.
As always, my friends, much love, good vibes. I’ll catch you next time. Bye.
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